Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Allstate's Strategy: Bail on Bonds, Own Cash Flow (ALL)

Very, very smart.
From Bloomberg:

Allstate Corp. (ALL) Chief Executive
Officer Thomas Wilson is cutting longer-term bonds from the
insurer’s $77.7 billion fixed-income portfolio as he seeks to
invest in hotels and toll roads with yields near record lows.

The largest publicly traded U.S. auto and home insurer is
shifting course three years after Wilson correctly predicted
that yields would fall and boost the portfolio’s value. The
assets have rebounded from more than $9 billion in unrealized
losses at the end of March 2009 to almost $6 billion in gains as
of Sept. 30, according to regulatory filings.

“We are taking some of that $6 billion off the table and
effectively harvesting those interest-rate gains,” Wilson said
in an interview in his office at Allstate’s Northbrook, Illinois
headquarters. “We’d rather lock in those gains today, take the
capital gains, and reinvest at a lower interest rate now,
because we think that interest rates will eventually go up.”

The Federal Reserve has held borrowing costs near zero and
expanded its balance sheet through bond purchases to help
stimulate the economy after the deepest financial crisis since
the Great Depression. That’s punished savers, said Wilson, and
spurred businesses that rely on higher interest rates to take
longer-term risks and settle for lower-quality investments.

“There’s a food fight going on in the fixed-income market
right now, because everybody’s looking for yield,” Wilson, 55,
said in the Nov. 30 interview. “We’re saying we’d rather own
things than lend on things. Hotels, real assets, infrastructure,
you pick it. Rather than loan you money to buy the toll way,
we’d rather just own part of the toll way, because if interest
rates go up, I’m going to get crushed on the bond.”...MORE